


Shower Savior, or, Ciało to Krucha Rzecz

by Assassin_J



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Closeted Characters, Crack Treated Seriously, LGBTQ Characters, M/M, Modern Assassins (Assassin's Creed), Slow Burn, Time Travel Fix-It, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-05-18 20:23:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14859653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Assassin_J/pseuds/Assassin_J
Summary: Clay time-traveled to save Desmond. He didn't intend to arrive naked in Desmond's shower while Desmond was using it.(based onthis tumblr prompt)





	1. O jaki świat dziś walczysz?

It was a small bathroom, but it got the job done. Desmond liked the smallness, actually. If he forgot the razor when he went to shower he could reach out from the shower to the shelf and get that razor. If he needed more toilet paper, he could get it from under the sink while he was still sat on the john.

But that smallness became a problem when a stranger appeared in his fucking shower.

A naked stranger.

There was totally not enough room for two grown-ass men in this small shower. Desmond fell backwards and nearly smacked his head on the wall.

"Woah!" The stranger grabbed him by the upper arm to stop him falling even further. He was a sturdy, thick sort of man, and he looked almost as surprised as Desmond was. But mixed in with the surprise he looked pretty happy too. "Desmond, hi, hi," he said in a manic rush, "fuck, this finally worked and now I forgot my whole speech I had-"

"What the, who, why are you here?!" Desmond asked, pulling out of his grip.

The stranger wiped a hand across his dirty-blond bangs. "Sorry, sorry, shit, I didn't mean to show up like this." He stepped back, as much as he could within the confines of the shower. "Look, I promise I'm here to help. You've got to listen-"

"How did you just fucking appear?!" Desmond demanded.

"It's time travel, I'm from the future," the stranger said, wiping his hair again, because the shower was spraying right on the crest of his head and the water kept running down his bangs into his eyes.

"Fucking time travel?!"

"You saw me fucking appear, Desmond! I'm from the future and you've got to fucking lis-"

"How do you know my name?" He hadn't gone by Desmond since he'd left the Farm nearly a decade ago.

"Cause you're a very important person, Desmond Miles," the stranger said, emphasizing the name. "We've got to move fast or else you could fucki-"

"Can we discuss this after I get dressed, holy shit."


	2. Jaki świat ci się marzy?

Desmond stumbled out of the shower and wrapped a towel around himself. He felt drunk, unsteady, like he was going to fall down again. He sat down next to his bed and closed his eyes, feeling the world spinning beneath him and his heart pumping inside him. He didn't need this shit.

He heard the stranger stepping out of the bathroom too.

"Sorry again. I had no idea it would transport me sans clothing."

Desmond groaned and put a hand to his forehead. "Is this acid? Someone dosed me with acid last night and it's just now kicking in?"

The stranger barked a laugh, but quickly stopped by covering his mouth. "You dope, acid doesn't work like that. Believe me, this is real."

"Why am I all dizzy and shit, then?"

"Oh you got that too? Temporal displacement sickness, let's call it. Thought that was only affecting me, but I guess since we interacted right as I warped in, you got a touch of it too." The stranger paused. "Are you getting dressed or not? We don't have a ton of time."

"Time for what?"

The stranger had wrapped himself in a towel too, and was leaning against the wall next to the closet. "Right, okay, here's the speech I prepped. You know how you left the Assassins behind?"

"Fuck," Desmond said, surprise shooting him to his feet.

The stranger didn't stop. "Well we need you to come back, at least temporarily, 'cause there's a prophecy with your name on it."

"A prophecy?"

The stranger leaned forward with arms crossed. "Yeah," he said, smirking dryly. "You're supposed to save the world. But it didn't happen 'cause Abstergo got their hands on you first."

Desmond pinched himself. He didn't wake up.

"We tried to get you out of there, but that didn't work for various reasons. So this is just about our last resort; we cobbled together a time machine from Isu tech. So here I am." The stranger gestured sharply to the closet. "Get your damn clothes on already so we can go."

"Go where?"

The stranger gestured again, angrily now.

Desmond frowned, grabbed an outfit, and ducked into the bathroom so he could dress in private. He heard hangers shuffling around; the stranger was picking an outfit for himself too.

"To answer your question, it's actually not far. We don't even have to leave the state."

Desmond grunted noncommittally.

"Oh, you can talk freely. They haven't bugged your apartment."

"Shut up!" Desmond spat, thumping a hand on the bathroom wall to punctuate it. "I have to get to work!"

The stranger paused. There was the quiet metal sound of a zipper sliding up. "Desmond. Haven't you been listening?"

"I don't believe in your stupid prophecy, okay?" Desmond said, rushing a comb through his hair. "If I believed in that shit I wouldn't have left!"

"What's to believe? You saw me appear!"

"So you picked my lock and did some fucking sleight-of-hand while I was showering-"

"Sleight of my entire body! And why the hell would I break in naked?!" The stranger pulled the bathroom door open. "For fuck's sake, Desmond! This is real! Stop fighting it!"

"Stop screwing with me!" Desmond threw the comb at the stranger. The motion fucking reminded him of knife-throwing practice all those years ago. God _dammit_ he couldn't ever escape, could he?

The stranger dodged sideways. The comb bounced on Desmond's bed, and slid clattering into the void between bed and wall.

"We're dressed now," the stranger said. "Let's get going."

"I'm gonna go to work." Desmond poked the stranger's chest. "And you better fucking not follow me!"

"They're going to get you tonight," the stranger said. His face was hard, his eyes cold. "They tracked you down by DNA when you donated plasma for some extra cash. Your fake name is Francisco Carrera. A couple years ago it was Franklin Ramirez. And before that it was-"

"So you know all my fake names, what does that prove?" Desmond shoved past him and started putting his shoes on. "Besides, I donated plasma two months ago. If they're really mad scientists, they're some fucking slow-ass mad scientists."

"Desmond, I-" the stranger's voice broke.

"What kind of help can I be, anyway? I was a poor-to-middling-level fighter."

"You're... the prophecy," the stranger said quietly. "We don't really know much else."

Desmond shook his head. "Too vague."

"Dammit. I had photos..." The stranger sank onto the bed. "Photos of... what it looks like after... the disaster." He knocked his forehead with the heel of his hand. "I didn't know the process of time travel would strip everything off my body."

Desmond looked at him, at this sad stubborn man wearing his faded, too-big AC/DC shirt. "Disaster, huh?"

"Fire from the sky. Radiation." The stranger drew in a shaky breath. "Everything burned. The forests, the cities, the oceans... Everything."

Something in the stranger's voice resonated and made Desmond stop caring about his shift that started at nine. He stood there and waited. 

The stranger coughed a sob, and then wiped his eyes and balled his fists to stop them shaking. He began to speak again, a little more composed, in short staccato sentences. "There's a machine. Deep underground. It could shield the planet. But we couldn't get it to turn on."

Desmond crossed his arms. "Love to help, but I'm not any better with machines than I am with fighting."

"No, listen. It's in your genes. Like a key. Your dad had part of the solution, but he wasn't enough. Not him and your daughter together either."

"My dau- wha?"

"Oh. Yeah." The stranger snapped his head up to look at Desmond. "You wanna live long enough to meet your daughter?" he asked, flinging the question like a dangerous weapon he would've rather not used.

It had a larger-than-expected effect on Desmond. "Dau- daughter?" he stammered. "When do I have a daughter? How far in the future are you from?" He'd assumed by the man's urgency that this was quite an imminent thing, but if he'd sired a daughter in the intervening timespan, then- 

"I'm from 2018, and... not gonna answer that other one. Not yet."

"Twenty-eighteen?" Desmond rubbed his forehead. "Six years."

"Six shitty shitty years." The stranger stood up and exhaled. "We estimate there's only a couple hundred humans left, max. And that number's not increasing; radiation sterilized most of us. Plus the animal population's similarly fucked."

"Ouch."

"Plants too, of course."

"Of course." Desmond looked down at his shoelaces, then back at the stranger. "Sounds pretty dire."

"Extremely dire. My name's Clay, by the way."

"Hi," Desmond said feebly.

A faint smile curled one corner of Clay's face. "Do you believe me now?"

"I'll... give you the benefit of the doubt." Desmond swallowed. A myriad thoughts were flying through his head. His mouth grabbed one at random and spoke it aloud. "What's my daughter's name?"

Clay grinned, and held out a hand. "Come with me; we'll find out together."


	3. Jakiego świata pragniesz?

Clay helped Desmond pack a small duffel bag with bare essentials, "in case my plan falls through."

"What is your plan, actually?" Desmond asked.

"There's a club downtown, and Assassins are gonna recruit some people from it today after a fight breaks out in the parking lot. We need to be there or else we don't have an in for another two months, which would leave us deadly short on time."

Desmond slung the bag on his back and gestured at himself with his free hand. "Wouldn't I be your in? Tell them you found William's long-lost son that's in the prophecy."

"They wouldn't just trust me like that; they don't know whomst the fuck I am," Clay said with a scoff.

"Did you say 'whomst'?"

"Oh, it's a word that took off in 2017." He smiled for a moment but then it went away. "So listen. I can't be Clay Kaczmarek because the 2012 version Clay Kaczmarek is somewhere else." He raked a hand through his thinnish hairline. "Plus the 2012 version looks about ten years younger."

"Didn't you say it was six years?"

"The radiation takes a toll on the body. C'mon, let's go."

"Should I, uh, call my work and tell them I'll be out?"

Clay shook his head. "No, that's probably a bad idea."

"If you say so, future-man."

"Wow, you're so trusting of me now," Clay said, a little laugh-like bounce in his voice.

Desmond shrugged. "Well I can either trust you or I can keep being all skeptical. If there's no actual prophecy and disaster and shit, that means you'd just be a random Assassin coming to steal me back to Dad, and you wouldn't have shown up alone and naked."

"Very sensible of you." Clay nodded. "So, you ready to head out?"

Desmond looked around his one-room apartment. He lived kinda minimallistically, but there were things he would miss, like the blue neon lightning bolt hung on the east wall, and the popcorn machine he'd just started using, and the Nintendo Wii he loved playing sports on. He'd skipped town before from other apartments, but he'd lived here for longer than any of them. "Once I do this prophecy thing, can I come back?" he asked, though he pretty much knew the answer.

"I don't think that would be wise." Clay put his hand out, gesturing for permission to touch Desmond's shoulder.

Desmond gave a microscopic nod.

Clay nodded in return and set his hand on Desmond's shoulder lightly. "I know you don't like this. But we have to go."

"All right," Desmond said, hanging his head.

"Maybe you won't even want to come back."

Desmond stiffened and backed away. "I'm only coming to save the world. I don't wanna be part of the Assassins." He breathed in and turned to the door. "Let's go."

 

* * *

 

They went out the window via the fire escape, because Clay insisted. Desmond thought he was being paranoid. But then again, all the Assassins were always paranoid. There hadn't been any change in that since Desmond's departure.

"Which way is downtown?" Clay asked. "I had a map but it got taken with the rest of my stuff."

"It's this way," Desmond said, pushing past him.

"Let's stay in the back streets, remember. Abstergo got cameras."

Desmond rolled his eyes. "Sure they do."

"Believe me or don't, Des."

Desmond changed the subject. "Where's the address of this club?"

"420 Fifth Avenue."

"Do we gotta walk the whole way?"

"I could steal someone's bike?"

Desmond stopped and spun around. "I have a bike! I have a motorcycle! Back at my place!"

Clay thought on it a moment. "Is it in a garage?"

"Yeah, where else?"

"Garages have cameras." Clay pushed past him and poked his head out into the street. "Oh, jackpot." He jogged across the street.

Desmond went out after him. "This is the gym I work out at."

"Thanks for the trivia," Clay called. He was squatting by the bike rack, patting his jeans (Desmond's jeans actually). "Shit I don't have my tools. Goddamn time travel."

"Can't we take the subway?"

"Abstergo got cameras," Clay said again, lifting a bike lock and testing the dial. "Nearly everywhere."

"If they got that many cameras, they can't possibly watch 'em all."

"They got a program that finds people on the cameras automatically. You heard of ctOS?"

"That's not by Abstergo, is it?"

Clay let out a frustrated sigh. "Whether or not they designed it, they're certainly using it."

Desmond recognized that they. That word with that intonation was the way Assassins euphemistically referred to Templars. "Well... they never found me."

"They didn't know Francisco Carrera was an escaped Assassin who's descended from a bunch of really hot-shit people. Not until connecting the dots with your DNA in 2012- I mean like today. Now if ctOS spots you it'll flag the- Ah, yeah baby." The lock fell open and Clay shot Desmond a grin. "With just three digits, these are easy to guess the combination to."

"Wait, there's only one seat on that bike."

Clay stood up and pushed it at Desmond. "I'm in good shape, you lead the way, I'll run behind."

 

* * *

 

The exterior of the club was painted all blue, except for an orange header across the top for the name, and a rainbow flag hung over the front window.

"Ginger's? This is a gay bar," Desmond said when the place came into view. "I'm not gay."

"Jesus Desmond, grow a spine," Clay said. "It's to save your life." He walked up nonchalantly and pushed the swinging door open. Desmond dropped the bike by a hydrant and followed him in.

It was still early, so there wasn't a bouncer, which was good, as Clay didn't have an ID. They scooted into a small booth near the back. "Should we order something?"

"If you want," Clay said.

"I could really use some booze in this situation."

Clay shrugged and gestured at the bar.

Desmond started to get up.

"Get me some orange juice," Clay said. "Haven't had good orange juice since the Disaster."

Desmond sat back down. "You gonna pay me back for it?"

"All my money's in the future. And it's just fucking orange juice, not pinot grigio."

"Bad metaphor. Pinot grigio's a cheap-ass wine."

"I'm saving your life, the least you can do is buy me a juice."

"All right, all right." Desmond got up again, shaking his head.

Smiling, Clay rested his head on one arm and watched him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "that s a gay bar he says as if he was str8" - kidd, on the [picarto stream](https://picarto.tv/acjulia)


	4. Dla mnie i moich dzieci

Desmond came back with an orange juice for Clay and a beer for himself. "So," he said, sliding into the seat again, "tell me about this machine that's gonna stop your disaster." He said it in sort of a weary tone, sort of the tone a babysitter would take in asking a child what the monster bothering her looked like.

Clay took a slow sip of the juice.

Desmond snapped his fingers. "Dude, come on."

"Gimme a moment," Clay said with difficulty, as he had orange juice sloshing in his mouth.

Desmond made a noise of frustration, and popped open his beer while he waited. [A Spanish dance-pop song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxTrUhTE9Dg) began playing over the club speakers.

Clay savored his juice. It had been a long long while since he'd been able to enjoy a nice cold sweet drink. In the time he'd departed from, the beverage options were highly limited. They had acid-tasting water, and they had poorly-crafted bathtub booze with no ice, and that was pretty much it.

One of the bar staff, dressed in casual slacks and a pink-striped shirt, walked over to their booth. "Good morning, boys," she said. "You two need anything?"

Desmond put down his beer. "I'm good, I guess."

The woman noticed Desmond's bag under the table. "What's with the duffel?"

"His roommates started being homophobic, so he's coming to live with me," Clay lied, so smoothly that you'd never know he was making it up on the spot. Desmond wondered if he'd prepared this story in advance.

"Those damn straights," she said, shaking her head.

"Those damn straights," Clay agreed vigorously, raising his glass.

She smiled at Desmond. "Glad you've got support. Anyway, my name's Erica, if you need anything."

Clay nodded. "We're gonna sit here a while and talk about his next steps. I'll flag you down when we're ready to order."

Erica moved on to a group of dudes talking animatedly a few booths down. Clay carefully watched her go.

Desmond cleared his throat. "So, the machine?"

"It's an orb," Clay answered without taking eyes off Erica. "Big fat orb mechanism. They call it the Eye." He took another sip. "It's sealed behind a force field, which took a shitload of effort to open."

Desmond swallowed another gulp of beer. "Force field. Really."

"Yeah, really." Erica finished taking the other group's order and headed to the kitchen, and Clay looked back to Desmond finally. "It's First Civ. Your pop told you about the First Civ, right?"

Desmond chewed his lip. "Kinda? But... I thought that was even more bullshit than the rest of it," he finished in a rushed mutter.

"It's not." Clay set down his half-empty glass. "They're real. Or they were real, back before they all died."

Still skeptical, Desmond made a _chk_ sound with his tongue. "Weren't they, like, immortal gods?"

"No; they were powerful, but not immortal." Clay brushed a piece of debris off the edge of their little table. "They died out after the first Disaster."

The debris floated gracelessly to the stained floor.

Desmond had a sudden mental image of skyscraping dinosaurs burned to ash by the roar of a crashing comet. "And now a second one's coming," he said softly.

"Yes." Clay's eyes looked at once tired and determined. "It's coming in just a few months."

"Didn't you say it was six years from-"

Clay clapped a hand on the table. "Building a time machine takes a while, fucker," he hissed between his teeth. "And we didn't even start it until way after the shit hit the fan. First we were busy trying to keep people alive, and of course I didn't even think about the time idea for a few years-"

"Okay, okay, chill dude!"

Clay composed himself and went back to drinking the orange juice.

"Yeah, sorry, I talked without thinking," Desmond said. "So... just a few months, huh?"

"Just a few months," Clay reaffirmed, after another slow swig of juice. "By coincidence or not, the 2012 hysteria is right."

Desmond sipped at his beer pensively. María Daniela's "Duri Duri" faded out and [another song started, with a slow ballad in English.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ)

**_Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?_ **

**_Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality_ **

**_Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see_ **

"She's got beautiful eyes," Clay said over Freddie Mercury.

"She who?"

"Your daughter. Can't believe you forgot already."

Desmond exhaled. "Look, I'm having to process a lotta info right now." He scratched at his head. "But I didn't forget, it's just you jumped topics on me without warning."

"Beautiful eyes," Clay repeated. "You'll never forget 'em once you see 'em."

Taking another drink, Desmond gestured for him to continue.

"One eye brown, one eye blue. Rare quirk of genetics."

"Oh. Neat."

Clay smirked. "Yeah, I suppose it is."

**_Bismillah! No! We will not let you go!_ **

"Hard to have a conversation with Queen playing," Desmond noted as the loud operatic lyrics continued.

"It's fine," Clay said with a handwave, "we're just killing time until the fracas occurs."

**_Never let you go!_ **

**_Let me go!_ **

**_Never let me go!_ **

"She's definitely got your hair," Clay said, gesturing to Desmond's mop of dark curls. "Just like that but longer."

"You still haven't told me her name," Desmond reminded him. "What, is it gonna break the timeline too much if you reveal it to me now?"

"Eh, something like that, yeah."

**_Oh baby! Can't do this to me baby!_ **

**_Just gotta get out! Just gotta get right outta here!_ **

As the music decrescendoed into the outro, Desmond realized his pocket was ringing. He pulled out his Samsung. "Ah, it's Ricky from work."

Immediately upon seeing the phone, Clay snatched it and snapped it in two. "You brought your fucking phone with you!?"

"Jesus!" Desmond yelped.

Working fast, Clay also removed the sim card from the broken device. "You brought your fucking phone?! They can track that shit!"

"Dude you're being too paranoid! You said Abstergo gets me tonight, I'm safe until then right?"

"In the original timeline, yeah! But now you didn't show up to work they might figure out you're onto them and-"

"Well whose fault is it I didn't show up to work, huh? You coulda come got me after my shift!"

"Hey I had enough trouble getting that thing to work at all, let alone dialing in the exact hour of arriv-"

"Is there a problem, boys?" Erica said. She was back at their table, presumably drawn by their argument.

"No, no, we're fine." Clay settled back into his seat, stuffing the phone parts into his pocket. "We had a disagreement on uh, scheduling."

"We don't want any trouble in here," Erica warned.

"I don't wanna make trouble, ma'am," Desmond said sincerely.

"Alright."

Desmond waited a few beats for the mood to calm down. "Uh... can I get a grilled-"

And then a large rock crashed through the window over their booth, followed by malevolent jeering from several voices outside.

"Oh shit, here we go," Clay said, as if he'd been waiting for this exact thing to happen. He tossed the rest of his orange juice back and gestured at Desmond to get up.

Desmond sighed and dug in his wallet. "Here's a couple extra bucks for your trouble, sorry," he said to Erica.

She considered for a moment, then shook her head. "Nah. You seem like you need it more than me."

"C'mon, Des!" Clay called.

Desmond pressed the bills toward Erica. "No it's okay. I'm not going to have much use for money where I'm going."

"Don't you dare go die," she said sternly. "Things will get better, babe, even if you're having a rough spot-"

"No, no, I'm- I'm not gonna need- because I'm going back to live with my parents," Desmond said, which was true, actually. Or sorta-true, inasmuch as his parents were a synecdoche of the Assassins.

"Your friend said you were gonna live with him," Erica said, still not touching the money.

"We're working out the details," Clay interjected. He grabbed Desmond's bag. "C'mon, Des, you hear that fight outside? We have to go."

Desmond heard blows landing and slurs flying. "Yeah, fuck, okay." He grabbed the bills and stuffed them in the jar up front that said "Put Your Change Here To Make Our Day A Little Gayer".

"Okay, my name's Michael until I say otherwise," Clay said to him as they exited Ginger's. "Don't forget that."

"Yeah 'cuz if there's two Clays there's a time paradox."

"No, 'cuz if there's two Clays they'll think the new one-" Clay indicated himself with his thumb- "is lying. Here, hold your duffel." He handed Desmond the bag and then charged into the parking lot to punch some homophobes.


End file.
